History

Sun-Managers was founded in May of 1989 by
William LeFebvre, at Northwestern University.
At the time, Bill ran Sun-Spots, a digest-format mailing list for system
administrators of Sun systems, but the digest format made it difficult for
people to ask questions and get a timely response. He created Sun-Managers,
an unmoderated mailing list intended for short-turnaround time questions.
This was an immediate success: so much so that by the fall of 1989, the sheer
number of messages on the list were swamping mailboxes. In Nov 1989, Bill
instituted a simple policy:
if someone asks a question on the list, other
list members were expected to reply by email directly to the person asking
the question, not to the list. The person asking the question, in turn, was
expected to summarize the answers received, and send the summary to the list.

This policy was very effective: the list volume was reduced immediately,
yet the turnaround time on questions was still short. Moreover, the summaries
were archived, and this archive
became a resource in itself, a knowledge-base of practical information about
administering Sun systems.

The list grew very rapidly: 343 summaries in 1990, and over 1000 in
1991. In August of that year, it was noted that certain questions were being
asked often, and rather than waste effort answering the same question several times, a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) file
was instituted. The
first version was created by a list member from
Boston University, and quickly grow to
dozens of answers.

By November of 1992, the list had grown to thousands of members, and
the workload of managing the list, editing the FAQ and coaching list members
on how to follow the list policy had become
significant. Many list members were not individuals, but "mail exploders":
email addresses that themselves were mailing lists going to multiple
individuals at a given site. This made handling list membership issues more
complex. Bill LeFebvre decided to hand the list over to others. Two list
members stepped up:
Gene Rackow from
Argonne National Laboratory to run the list software, and John DiMarco from
the University of Toronto to handle the
FAQ and policy work. The list itself was moved from Northwestern University
to a system at Argonne National Labs.

The list continued to grow through the 1990s: by 1996, over two thousand
summaries a year were being produced, peaking at 2243 in 2002. During the
list's tenure at Argonne, Sun Microsystems donated a Sparcstation to
support it. In May of 1998, Gene Rackow handed over list management to
Rob Montjoy from the University of Cincinnati, who in turn handed over
list management to
Bill Bradford in
November of 2000. The list was moved from Argonne National Labs to a system
in Austin run by Bill. John DiMarco continued to manage the list
policy and edit list information files, such as
a "think before posting" reminder
and the FAQ which had grown to 79 questions by December 2000. This had become
a bit too large, and so 19 questions deemed
less frequently asked were trimmed. A further trim was made in
2005, reducing a 65-question FAQ to
one under 60.

By 2002, the list had reached over five thousand members and the
workload of running the list software and managing the list
subscriptions had become too much for one person. Dan Astoorian of the
University of Toronto stepped in to help. Moreover, the list server hardware
was feeling the strain: by mid-2001, list members were being asked to
contribute used equipment to upgrade the server. This was resolved in April
2003, when the list was migrated to a machine at the University of Toronto
that had been donated to the University by Sun Microsystems.

But times were changing. Linux was growing rapidly and Sun's business
was being affected. The web provided more resources for people seeking
help administering their systems, and fewer were relying on mailing lists.
The list fell below 2000 summaries per year in 2003, under 1200 in 2004, and
dropped below 1000 in 2005. By 2008, summaries per year had fallen to about
300, fewer than in any full-year period previously. Sun Microsystems ran into
significant difficulties during the economic downturn that year,
and was sold to
Oracle the following year. As for the list, in 2009,
there were just over 200 summaries, declining to less than 100 in 2011.
More disturbingly, the ratio of summaries to questions was steadily declining,
from over 24% in 2001 to less than 16% by 2010: for some reason, list
members were becoming less diligent in summarizing responses back to the
list. Summaries and list traffic in general continued to decline rapidly:
there were just over 50 summaries in 2012, and less than a dozen in 2013.
In 2014, there were only three by October, when a hardware failure provided
a good excuse to retire the list.

The Sun-Managers mailing list, over its twenty-five year lifetime,
provided help to many thousands of system administrators, producing over
29000 summaries,
an archive of which continues to be available.
Special thanks is due to the list maintainers over the years: William LeFebvre,
Gene Rackow, Rob Montjoy, Bill Bradford, Dan Astoorian, and John DiMarco.
Gratitude, also, is due to the thousands of list members who so freely
shared their knowledge and expertise with others.